The Three Songs You Need to Download This Week

There’s a lot of music online–more than most people have time to keep up with. That’s why you’ve got us. Every week, we’ll point you toward three excellent new downloads or videos from chart-topping stars, cult favorites and unknown geniuses.

1. Animal Collective curated the upcoming ATP festival in England, which is happening May 13-15. If you can’t make it there, though, they’ve also put together a two-hour-plus-long mixtape–which you can download as an MP3–featuring a bunch of the acts playing the festival. Besides the festival’s bigger names (Big Boi, Beach House, Animal Collective themselves), it includes some fantastic obscurities by the lesser-known geniuses they’ve booked–Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, The Brothers Unconnected, and others.

2. Along with its holiday card last year, the long-running indie-pop label TeenBeat included a CD with extracts from some recent releases and a handful of unreleased marvels. Now they’ve offered the whole thing for free download, including a torrential live version of Unrest’s “Hydro” (from 1992), as well as tracks by hollAnd, Cotton Candy, Bloody Amateur and others.

3. The Canadian R&B crew The Weeknd–that’s how they spell it–have been sprinkling tracks here and there for the last few months. Now they’ve released a free, downloadable mixtape, House of Balloons, via their own site. (Note to those who download music at work: there’s an arty-naked image at that link.) You can also stream its songs individually via SoundCloud. There’s some gorgeous stuff on it, especially “What You Need” and the title track (which repurposes a bit of Siouxsie and the Banshees’ “Happy House”).